Toddler Toothcare Tips Video

Taking care of babies first teeth is an important step to good health. We visit a pediatric dentist who gives us tips on how to start your child with good dental care that lasts a lifetime.Read the full transcript »

Dr. Corieli: I love working with the children. It's such a drive, they come in. They’re all wonderful. They all have a lot of things to tell you. You interact. They become your friends and it's sort of worthy. And when you have a child that is a little bit scared and you can make him or her go for the treatment to see the satisfaction they feel that they did it with you. To me it's really fantastic. The main difference between a pediatric dentist and a family dentist or an adult dentist is that pediatric dentists are trained on behavior management. We are trained to help the children through the procedure dealing with their fears, make them comfortable, be sure that they have a good experience. And the second reason is that what we think of as pediatric dentist is the future. We think about growth and development. We think about the way the face will grow in a year from now, in six months from now whereas an adult dentist deals with something that will not change. The first dental visit should be about at age one. And the reason for that is that if you start very, very early, you can do a very good prevention. The first visit is mainly for the parents. Sitting down with the parents talking to them, is telling them what to do, what not to do. Obviously, you do examine the child but the information and exchange it for knowledge because between the pediatric dentist and the parents is very important. There are a couple of things that are very important. Breastfeeding per se like the bottle per se, they does not cause cavities except if you put your child to sleep with the bottle or if you breastfed all the time. Then the amount of time the milk is in contact with the teeth, it's too long and then the chances of getting cavity on that child. If—is fine, we like to see children every six months. That gives us enough time to see changes, do appreciate the changes and growth and development without missing important sign to something maybe— Female: Dr. Corieli has a certain way about her with handling children and I truly believe that children sense that about her and that she’s warm and comforting and they just automatically trust her. It's amazing. Children just sense it and they’ll just come and find. Dr. Corieli: I just wanted to show you a few toothbrushes and toothpaste that may help you to clean your child’s teeth. When the baby is really a newborn, what’s very good is use just a simple gauze and the way you use it, you put around your finger and you just wipe the child’s mouth. That’s all you have to do. Put some water over the gauze, that’s perfectly fine. Alternatively, there is this baby wipes. They have xylitol. They supposedly helps with bacteria. The very same thing, you just open them, put around your finger and swipe the mouth. Once the baby starts to have few baby teeth, it's a good idea to use a very small toothbrush. It's easy to handle and it makes it easy for you to go and brush the teeth and don’t forget to massage the gums. Even if you see any tooth yet, that’s where the other teeth to come in so you want to massage the gums to make teething easier. This is the next step when the child has more teeth, then you can use a small toothbrush. This toothbrush is made for children. It has a small head. It's very soft. It's very easy to reach the back teeth. And then obviously as the child grows, you use a bigger toothbrush. But essentially, what you need to do is choose the proper toothbrush but also make sure that you use it two times a day, morning and night, after breakfast, before the child goes to sleep. Children will not always like it, they may fight you but you still need to brush. It's the most important thing you can do for your child’s teeth. Toothpaste, every toothpaste that is ADA approved is a good toothpaste. There are different flavors, different brands. All you have to make sure is that you use only a pea size drop. You want to put on the toothbrush just a very small amount, just like that. So if

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